Maintaining a business without a website is almost the same thing as having a storefront that fails to show customers where to enter. Today’s customers are just as likely to find your business on the Web as they are to enter your building when passing by on the street.

If your business has yet to develop an online presence, don’t worry – it’s easier than you think. Depending on your business’s needs, you may not need a comprehensive e-commerce solution. Developing an online presence may simply mean building an essential business website with an easy-to-use template to let your customers know the basics about what you offer. Or you can hire professionals to build it for you, at a fraction of what it might have cost years ago.

Whether you’re just getting your website off the ground or are revamping it after many years, it’s important to let your customers know where to find you online. Here are a few ways to help your customers locate your website:

* Bring them up to speed using custom postcards. Send postcards to customers already on your traditional mailing list as well as those in your neighborhood. As you’re training yourself to think digitally, it’s quite common to use a traditional means to help your customers make the journey with you.

* Notify your customers via e-mail. Once your site is up and running, e-mail customers and business associates with the new URL and let them know what they can expect to find on the site, whether it’s new or updated. You may also decide that using e-mail marketing software is an easy and cost-effective way to keep your clients up to date with what’s going on at your business.

* Make sure online business directories – starting with the ones that come up first in searches – list your new website. Most of these listings come free of charge and take little time to update.

* Offer exclusive deals through your website to give your customers an incentive to visit your site. After you introduce your website, update it with new and useful content as frequently as possible to provide people with a reason to stop by occasionally.

You wouldn’t want to keep the name of your business out of the phonebook; keeping your business off the Internet would be a similar mistake. If you haven’t developed your website, or it’s in dire need of an update, there’s no better time than now.